From CoderDojo to online travel!

13 November 2014 · by PeterOShea

“I went straight into CoderDojo out of secondary school,” he says. “I wanted to learn about management. I also didn’t know much about traditional working structures.”

Whelton started CoderDojo in 2011 after he received some publicity for being the first person to hack the iPod Nano. As a result, some younger students expressed an interest in learning how to code and he set up a computer club in his school (PBC Cork).

Later that year, he met web entrepreneur and philanthropist Bill Liao who was interested in developing the project into something bigger.

“I never considered doing coding clubs outside of schools. It was Bill that said we should. I was never recognised as being high-achieving or academic at school. It was frustrating as I was really good at programming but getting my ass kicked by my pass maths teacher.”

Whelton then left home in Cork and moved to Dublin to develop CoderDojo.